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Jean Hanff Korelitz

You Should Have Known Hardcover – March 18, 2014

by Jean Hanff Korelitz (Author)

5,213 ratings

Editors' pick Best Mystery, Thriller & Suspense

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Grace Reinhart Sachs is living the only life she ever wanted for herself. Devoted to her husband, a pediatric oncologist at a major cancer hospital, their young son Henry, and the patients she sees in her therapy practice, her days are full of familiar things: she lives in the very New York apartment in which she was raised, and sends Henry to the school she herself once attended.

Dismayed by the ways in which women delude themselves, Grace is also the author of a book You Should Have Known, in which she cautions women to really hear what men are trying to tell them. But weeks before the book is published a chasm opens in her own life: a violent death, a missing husband, and, in the place of a man Grace thought she knew, only an ongoing chain of terrible revelations. Left behind in the wake of a spreading and very public disaster, and horrified by the ways in which she has failed to heed her own advice, Grace must dismantle one life and create another for her child and herself.

Print length

448 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Grand Central Publishing
Publication date

March 18, 2014
Dimensions

6.5 x 1.5 x 9.5 inches
ISBN-10

1455599492
ISBN-13

978-1455599493
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Popular Highlights in this book

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And it’s that impulse to negate our own impressions that is so astonishingly powerful.
Highlighted by 645 Kindle readers
“The difficulty is when people count on that ‘you just know,’ and they dismiss people they don’t respond to right away. I actually think there are lots of good matches for each person, and they cross our paths all the time, but we’re so wedded to the idea of love at first sight that we can miss the really great people who don’t come with a thunderbolt attached.”
Highlighted by 318 Kindle readers
“Human transformation is possible. It requires immense courage and selflessness, but it does happen. It’s just that we spend so much effort on that slim possibility of correction and none at all on the side of prevention. That’s a serious disconnect, don’t you think?”
Highlighted by 216 Kindle readers

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. This excellent literary mystery by the author of 2009's Admission unfolds with authentic detail in a rarified contemporary Manhattan. Therapist Grace Reinhart Sachs is about to embark on a publicity blitz to promote her buzzed-about book on why relationships fail, You Should Have Known. In the meantime, she cares for her 12-year-old son, Henry, who attends the same private school she went to as a child. Grace also treasures her loving relationship with her longtime husband Jonathan, a pediatric cancer doctor at a prestigious hospital. The novel's first third offers readers an authoritative glimpse into the busy-but-leisurely lives of private-school moms. Grace does her best to get along with the school's vapid and catty fundraising committee. She eventually learns that one of the mothers outside her social strata, Malaga Alves, was found murdered in her apartment by her young son. Grace, already tense and sad from these events, becomes more and more anxious as Jonathan, at a medical conference in the Midwest, proves unreachable over several days. The author deftly places the reader in Grace's shoes by exploring her isolation, unease, and contempt for the rumor mill. The plot borders on hyperbole when it comes to upending what we know about one character, but that doesn't take much away from this intriguing and beautiful book. Agent: Suzanne Gluck, WME Entertainment. (Mar. 2014)

From Booklist

There is an exquisite but excruciating irony in the fact that Grace’s marriage is imploding. The successful Manhattan couples therapist is just about to start the PR blitz for her first book, one that examines the tell-tale, “he’s not right for you” signs that, caught early enough, can prevent shaky relationships from becoming emotional earthquakes. Mired in the media whirlwind while working on a fundraiser for her son’s tony private school, Grace is only peripherally aware that her husband, charismatic pediatric oncologist Jonathan, is characteristically but frustratingly incommunicado. Then when one of her committee associates is found brutally murdered the same time Jonathan drops off the radar screen, Grace slowly learns that everything she thought she knew about the man she married is blatantly false. Like peeling back the layers of an onion, Korelitz’s stinging deconstruction of this marital facade simultaneously reveals the inexorable lies about Grace’s supposedly ideal mate. Sensitively delving into the intricacies of self-deception, Korelitz (The White Rose, 2005) delivers a smart and unsettling psychological drama. --Carol Haggas

Review

"This excellent literary mystery [unfolds] with authentic detail in a rarified contemporary Manhattan. . . intriguing and beautiful."―Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"An old-fashioned novelist in the best sense, Korelitz takes a subject of consuming contemporary interest and uses it to frame a portrait of a wonderfully complex character confronting the choices she's made and the damage she's done, mostly to herself...Sensitively excavating Portia's personal history, Korelitz stirs compassion for this caring, self-doubting woman. She populates the book with three-dimensional characters who spotlight the obstacles thrown in Portia's path and the helping hands she's been unable to grasp...Well-written, well-plotted and extremely satisfying, "Admission" marks another step forward for a writer whose accomplishments grow more impressive with each book." (Praise for Admission)―Los Angeles Times

"...Jean Hanff Korelitz's compulsively readable new novel...At 449 pages, it's a doorstop-worthy tome. But unlike the painful process of waiting for that acceptance (or, God forbid, rejection) letter, Admission seldom drags...And Admission is that rare thing in a novel: both juicy and literary, a genuinely smart read with a human, beating heart." (Praise for Admission)―Entertainment Weekly

"That Korelitz has previously produced a thriller or two is evident in the sublimely paced plotting of this sharply observed and written novel...[Korelitz] knows her stuff. Better yet, she knows how to tell a story." (Praise for Admission)―The Atlantic

"Intriguing...Yes, there's a crime, but it's the human mystery that keeps us turning the pages."―Alice Hoffman, author of The Marriage of Opposites

About the Author

Jean Hanff Korelitz was born and raised in New York and graduated from Dartmouth College and Clare College, Cambridge. She is the author of one book of poems, The Properties of Breath, and three previous novels, A Jury of Her Peers, The Sabbathday River, The Devil and Webster, and The White Rose, as well as a novel for children, Interference Powder. She has also published essays in the anthologies Modern Love and Because I Said So, and in the magazines Vogue, Real Simple, More, Newsweek, Organic Style, Travel and Leisure (Family), and others. She lives in Princeton, NJ with her husband (Irish poet Paul Muldoon, poetry editor at the New Yorker and Princeton poetry professor) and two children.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Grand Central Publishing (March 18, 2014)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 448 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1455599492
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1455599493
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.55 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.5 x 1.5 x 9.5 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #180,660 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #3,339 in Psychological Fiction (Books)
- #4,326 in Psychological Thrillers (Books)
- #6,482 in Family Life Fiction (Books)

Customer Reviews:
5,213 ratings

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Jean Hanff Korelitz

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Jean Hanff Korelitz is the New York Times bestselling author of the novels THE PLOT (The 2021 Tonight Show Summer Reads pick), YOU SHOULD HAVE KNOWN (adapted for HBO as "The Undoing" by David E. Kelley, and starring Nicole Kidman, Hugh Grant and Donald Sutherland), ADMISSION (adapted as the 2013 film starring Tina Fey), THE DEVIL AND WEBSTER, THE WHITE ROSE, THE SABBATHDAY RIVER and A JURY OF HER PEERS. A new novel, THE LATECOMER, will be published on May 31st, 2022. Her company BOOKTHEWRITER hosts "Pop-Up Book Groups" in person in NYC and online, where small groups of readers can discuss new books with their authors. www.bookthewriter.com

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2 star		5%
1 star		4%

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MC Phillips

Irony is the name of the game, here...

Reviewed in the United States on May 26, 2020

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I read a lot of reviews before I purchased this book on my Kindle, and knew I was either going to enjoy it a lot or hate it, and I'd say my reaction was mostly on the enjoyable side. I loved the premise - I think a lot of the things the main character states at the beginning of the novel about how (she feels) women in bad relationships should have known things would turn sour based on things they intuited about their partners when they were first dating is dead on - I can't count the number of times a female friend or acquaintance has said something similar (or exactly the same!) to me following a bad break-up/divorce. It is patently obvious from the beginning that the main character is going to be hoisted on her own petard, so to speak, but the book was well-written enough that I was interested to see just how that was going to take place. I had no trouble believing that the man character was instantly ostracized by her "friends" after the mysterious murder of a fellow "mom" who turns out to have been involved with her husband - especially since she freely admits in the book that they aren't really friends, but rather people she needs/likes to stay "in good" with because of her family circumstances. The depiction of her friends is a bit skewed - they almost all seem like shallow, gossipy vultures, and I did have some difficulty believing that no one, especially perhaps the head of her son's school, spilled the beans about her husband's illegitimate son after her husband disappeared and was clearly a suspect in the death of his mistress, but that omission is required to move things along. The reveal at the end about her husband's family was expected, but I thought it was described well. The almost seamless acceptance of her son regarding his father's actions and personality are far-fetched - I can't imagine a child his age more or less shrugging and saying it's all OK; I feel an adverse reaction would have suited the story better. The main character's reaction to the truth is more believable - she feels like a fool, she (sort of) runs away to escape the publicity and scrutiny and begins to come to terms with the fact that "she should have known" about her husband. I did like the fact that her book was going to be published, anyway, at the end, with her as a prime example of the women she describes in it. All that said, I can understand why some people reacted negatively to the story line, because it does make the main character, who is a very intelligent woman, look foolish and naive, and this book is, in the end, just another version of "woman meets man and is taken in by him and comes to regret it", but as I said, I did enjoy the journey enough to keep reading to the end.

66 people found this helpful

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L Cameron

A fast read. Suspenseful, clever, and ironic.

Reviewed in the United States on September 13, 2021

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My favorite novels are those that get deep inside a character’s head, with lots of interior dialog, and I loved this one.

Grace, the main character is a savvy educated woman who is left wondering how the heck she walked herself into a scenario where there’s a murder at the preppy Manhattan school her son attends, and her husband is missing.

Add in the irony that Grace is a psychologist who wrote a book called “You Should Have Known” where she warns other women about the early relationship signs they should have listened to, and why we deny what our intuition is telling us about the men in our lives. I particularly appreciated this angle, and the insights it brought.

Understandably, when she finds out her husband is missing, Grace is racked with doubt – not only about her marriage but the entire premise of the value she brings to the world. A juicy internal conflict that I thoroughly enjoyed watching play out as she’s hit with revelation after revelation.

Interestingly, I watched the television show first, but for me, this novel was a clear example of where the book far exceeds the on-screen version, because of the ability to get inside the main character’s head.

Suspenseful, clever, and ironic. A fast read that left me wanting to read the author’s other work.

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The Attentive Reader

Reader: Don't Give Up!

Reviewed in the United States on July 14, 2014

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Page one: Grace Reinhart Sachs is in her office being interviewed and photographed for Vogue, one of many events preceding the publication of her book "You Should Have Known: Why Women Fail to Hear What the Men in Their Lives Are Telling Them." Grace is a therapist whose practice focuses on unraveling relationships. For weeks she has been surrounded by all the pros that populate the bandwagon of a major book launch, and assured her book will “snag the Zeitgeist.” She goes to a meeting in an Upper East Side apartment straight out of Architectural Digest, joining a group of expensively-tended women to finalize the details of a fundraising gala for the private school their children attend. Next, she picks up her young son for his violin lesson with an instructor who takes only the most promising students. They head home to get dinner going. Both hope Jonathan Sachs M.D., father and husband, can break free of his lucrative practice in pediatric oncology to join them.

Let’s just say any problems these people have are going to fall into the category of First World Problems. Actually – and definitely worse – they’re going to have Upper East Side Problems.

Korelitz has a gift for dialogue, so it was disappointing that the first third of the book was largely narrative. But I plugged along, and finally realized the author’s intention. Grace is surrounded by people in her professional, personal, and social lives, but she lives a largely solitary and disengaged life. In the early chapters, Korelitz buries Grace in the text, endlessly describing Grace’s thoughts and daily life. I was a bit overwhelmed by the sheer number of words on the pages. These early chapters are a lesson in rebellion against the “Don’t Tell Us; Show Us” lesson every writing teacher preaches. It’s a bold stylistic choice, and it pays off. Grace is never off the page; other characters enter and exit only to engage with her in brief conversation. The narrative simultaneously distances us from Grace and mirrors her, as it becomes clear that Grace is equally distanced from her story and herself. She has the right house, clothes, husband, and son. She says almost all the right words to her patients. But her life is a sham, an empty shell. It is not clear if she does not realize this, or if she chooses not to acknowledge it. And it is that ambiguity which makes the story most compelling. Who amongst us is consistently clear about ourselves and our intentions?

If you stick with it for 75 pages (and I skimmed a bit), you are rewarded with a tense and riveting plot and a cast of well-drawn characters. Grace finds her voice at a point when her world and almost everything she thought counted is upended. The dialogue becomes the novel’s driving force and we experience Grace in the “Show Us” mode that makes for a satisfying novel. She regains her balance when she escapes Manhattan for Upstate New York, where she and Jonathan have a summer house on a lake. (Well, of course they do.)

Korelitz has written a serious and literate novel about marriage and self-knowledge, and managed to pepper it with great houses, good looking neighbors, excellent food descriptions, and a winning rescue dog. I liked it a lot!

4 people found this helpful

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Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 28, 2020

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I disliked Gone Girl because of the incessant chatter which replaced the descriptive narrative, the constant exposition spread throughout the novel that filled the gaps where suspense and tension should be, the unnecessary particulars of the boring characters mundane daily lives and yet was promised a fantastic psychological thriller by every quote on the cover of this book that quite frankly read worse due to the lack of depth or plot. There wasn't even a twist or anything to look forward to. No build-up to an exciting revelation. I didn't care about the characters because there was no story to follow. It was just constant yakking which led nowhere. I'm disappointed I wasted an hour devouring the first two chapters and skim-reading the rest to see if anything actually happened that could have caused the publisher to categorise this literay-ish novel about nothing as a psychological thriller and was annoyed it didn't.

15 people found this helpful

Sheila

Avoid this book if you are looking for a decent read.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 23, 2015

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I found this book so badly written it was laughable. Here is a typical exert 'and then, in a location so deep inside her that she had not known of its existence, really, let alone it's whereabouts, something heavy and metallic chose this moment to creak the tiniest bit open, with a grating of rust and the release of a new, terrible thought: that everything rising around her was about to converge' I think the author is trying to be clever, but it is just ludicrous. I felt I was being lectured in the first chapter (was the author a teacher at some point?). The main character did not ring true. I do not recommend this book at all.

45 people found this helpful

A. Linton

At last a book that lives up to its hype

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 8, 2020

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Having been fooled a time too often by glowing reviews, I was pleasantly surprised to find that this was in fact a very readable book and I'm delighted to have discovered this author. More a comedy of manners than a thriller, it offers a glimpse into the life of a rich priviledged woman living in Manhatton with - she thinks - the perfect job, perfect child and perfect marriage. Though likeable, Grace is a little bit too smug, the kind of heroine you secretly long to see taken down a peg or too, especially since she has written a book called 'You should have known' which lectures less fortunate women on their relationship choices, and their failure to notice clear red flags right from the start. As it happens there were clear red flags when Grace met her seemingly ideal husband which she ignored - (IMO the truth is that it's perfectly easy to see this kind of thing in other people's relationship, virtually impossible when it's your own life). At times it is a little long winded and I feared that it was going to have one of those awful ambiguous endings but it fact it does offer closure and the first thing I did on finishing it was to start read it again. Definitely a keeper and I only wish there were more books from this writer available on kindle.

2 people found this helpful

Joanna Brewis

Read this, it’s much better than The Undoing

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 26, 2020

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This utterly brilliant novel will be familiar, at least for a while, to anyone who saw The Undoing. Sadly the serialisation did no justice to the book (which I first read years ago): it’s not as bad as the film version of Admission, but it departed a long way from the book and for no good reason. It even left out the central irony of the novel. In essence then, this is a wonderful book, carefully crafted and incredibly observant, about a woman who comes to realize her husband is a psychopath and a murderer. That makes it sound melodramatic and messy: it’s not in the least. For anyone who likes Meg Wolitzer and Donna Tartt - read this, you’ll love it!

2 people found this helpful

Vivienne Dangerpen

We all should know, don’t bother reading it.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 17, 2020

Verified Purchase

In all honesty I can’t see how this book got picked up to be made into a series. I can only say they took the bare bones and enriched it into another storyline which is much better. I found the book tedious and not a good read at all. I prefer the series.

5 people found this helpful

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